Holiday Words (from a previous
issue)

This coming Tuesday, the 25th
of December, in case any of our readers were unaware, is Christmas. In
northern England it was also known as Kesmas, Cursmas, and Cursmis.
Originally Cristes męsse in Old English, it means simply the mass,
or festival, of Christ. It is supposed to commemorate the birth
of Christ but, as his actual birthday is unknown, the Council of Nicea
(320-323 A.D.) assigned it to this date as a compromise with the cult of
Mithras.

Those who followed ancient
Roman paganism also had a festival at approximately the same time of year
called Saturnalia, "the feast of the god Saturn".
This festival was marked by reversing many social customs - slaves would be
served by their masters and men would wear women's clothes. Some of
this role reversal has survived to the present day. In the British Christmas
tradition of Pantomime, the "principal boy" is always played by a
woman and "his" mother (known as "the dame") is always
played by a man.

In northern Europe, a festival
was celebrated at this time of the year long before the Anglo-Saxons were
converted to Christianity and this festival was called yule, though
the origin of this word is obscure.

Some people object to the use
of Xmas as a hideous neologism. This abbreviation is hardly an
innovation as its first recorded use was in 1551 and the X in Xmas
is a very old abbreviation for Christ, from the Greek letter chi "ch",
which looks like an X and is the first letter in Greek Christos. In the days before general
literacy, many people would sign documents by making "their mark",
often an elaborate squiggle or flourish. Ordinary folk, who had not
the time to practice nor the wit to remember such devices, would simply draw
a cross or chi, the symbol of Christ, on the paper and then kiss it to show their
sincerity. This X symbol was also known as the Christ-cross, which
later became slurred to criss-cross. Also, this is why an X at
the bottom of a letter (or Christmas card) means a kiss.

The etymology of carol
is uncertain. While there is general agreement that it comes from the
Old French carole, no one really knows where it came from before
that. Most agree that the earlier form was probably corola but
opinions are divided as to whether it derives from chorus (i.e. the
singing dancers of ancient theater) or from corolla,
"crown" or "garland", from the shape of the
circle-dance.

It may come as a surprise to
many of our readers to discover that a carol was not originally a song but a
dance. Specifically it was a circle-dance, danced to a single
jig. (For our non-musical readers, a single jig goes DUM-dee, DUM-dee,
DUM-dee, DUM.) Another surprise is that it was not necessarily
associated with Christmas, either. There were Easter carols, too.